The Maker and the Beast
It was a horrid place, where no laws stood and gods gathered like insects attracted to a great fire. The Great Abyss, it was called: a crack in reality beyond the eyes of mortals. Great beasts were bred there, where they fought and bled and consumed one another; great gods were drawn there, licking this wound of the universe like parasites. But an even greater beast had been there, the God Eater, a titan among them, who had lurked there for aeons. A godly beast of enormous size, she had consumed countless, and all that were in her path would find no escape. The Maker of Machines had also been there, weaving a web of laws and order above the cosmic abyss where minor gods would get tangled and trapped. He was a different creature, desiring not the flesh and blood of other gods, but perfection and order. His existence was tolerated by the God Eater, as he was of no flesh, and therefore not delicious to her. She also found it pleasing that with the webs he weaved to trap the prey, her food came easier. The Maker of Machines had fixed countless disturbances in the clockwork order of the universe, and had built many grand machines each perfect in every detail. But even with his great skills and power, his task to mend the Great Abyss was impossible to achieve. He had concluded his actions to be futile, but was unwilling to give up. It was his one and only goal. A creature of order and reason, the Maker of Machines once looked down upon the beasts and the God Eater in disgust, thinking of them as a disease and the crack as a plague. But aeons later, he would stare numbly as his webs of laws broke time and again. He would then wonder whether chaos is the true natural order and whether he is the real disease, as he mended the webs once more like a tireless spider. As his hopes turned into despair and then indifference, and his passionate creation turned into mechanical repetition, the Maker of Machines wondered if he was wronged by his own perception. For once he looked towards the gods but saw them not as foul beings, towards the abyss but saw it not as a wound, but as something merely different from himself. He realized that his vision of a perfectly ordered universe was never meant to be. The Maker of Machines wondered if he should make something other than machines. It would be something new: Unlike the machines which he planned out every detail before building, and unlike the gods who were created chaotic and mindless, but a hybrid of both kinds. But even with his new goal in mind, all the Maker of Machines managed to construct were other kinds of machines. He could not break his own limitation of ideas, so he placed his eyes on the God Eater. This great beast, consuming millions of gods, would then in satisfaction breathe out their remains. And in these ashes of the past gods, the Maker saw new hopes. Collecting the ashes, the Maker came to a sphere and spread them among great waters. And in a bold attempt to imitate the Beast’s action, he breathed his own essence and ideas into them. Life was then created. The ashes of gods breathed out by the Beast grew and prospered in the water, and their minds also sprouted from the ideas the Maker had bestowed them. The Maker watched and knew that it was not perfect, unlike anything else he had created. But the machines he built had no potential, for they were too carefully planned out beforehand and all their potential had been realized. Life, however, was filled with potential. Machines, he could predict; but life, he could not anticipate. The Maker watched life grow and felt the great joy he had not felt for aeons. A new vision of the universe was unfolded before him. But these newly born beings were of flesh, delicate and delicious, which gods crave the most. So the Maker weaved webs once more, so the hungry beasts could not reach them with their claws. But the Maker’s protection was short lived, as the God Eater, the greatest beast, came across the small sphere. She came to bring doom to the very life she had breathed out. The Beast did not intend to prey on them, as they were too small for her taste, but neither did she care that her mere existence would shatter this fragile world. And the Maker could not let this happen. The Maker wished not to fight the Beast, as it was now clear to him that neither of their existences were wrong or flawed. And it was only because of her that life came to be. The Maker tried to reason with the God Eater, and even went so far to beg her to choose another route and spare this world. But the God Eater was a beast after all. She neither understood nor cared, and came closer and closer. The Maker had to defend their creation. Life was new and had endless possibility, and had become his purpose and meaning. The Maker told the Beast that he was sorry, and the Maker of Machines made one last grand machine. A cage, forged out of his own existence, to house the God Eater and banish her away from life. As the last grand machine was made, the Beast screamed and cursed, but the Maker could not feel that. He felt only himself shattering, descending to the sphere and manifesting into physical forms. A broken machine himself, he could no longer protect life, his most proud creation, a hybrid of him and the Beast. But the Maker was tired, and he closed his eyes. Category:SCP Foundation